


Unchanged

by SomewhereApart



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 02:35:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16904481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomewhereApart/pseuds/SomewhereApart
Summary: Robin may have left Regina when Marian returned, but that doesn't mean he's able to stay gone.





	Unchanged

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: “What happened doesn’t change anything.”

“What happened doesn’t change anything,” he tells her from her office doorway, less than two weeks after his wife has been returned to him. It’s a poor greeting, particularly for him, and Regina pauses in the notes she’d been jotting in the margins of the proposal in front of her and scowls deeply.

“Of course it does,” she tells him tersely, not looking up. Focus on your work, she’d told herself. Focus on Henry. Focus on not imagining a million different ways to rid this realm of that horrid (innocent, surely) woman so that she can take back the man that is rightfully (although his suddenly-valid-again marriage vows say otherwise) hers. 

Robin seems to take her speaking to him as an invitation - and maybe it was meant as one, she’s not sure anymore. She’s not sure of much these days. She’s sure she’s not sleeping well, sure she’s grateful she’s so skilled at subtle glamours that nobody can see the shadows under her eyes, the puffiness, the pallor of her skin. She’s sure she aches for him, that when sleep does come for her it’s filled with fitful dreams - his mouth, his skin, the scent of forest, of sweat and leather and Robin. She kills him in the end, she always does. Or her. Marian. She kills her often, too, her eyes wide and angry as she screams that Regina is a monster, screams it over and over until Regina proves her right, rips her heart out, crushes it to dust. She’s sure of those things, but not much else.

Robin moves to her, then, strides all the way across the office and crouches beside her chair, swivels it so she turns to face him. Tries to, anyway - Regina locks her foot against the motion, resists. Robin sighs.

“Not for me, it doesn’t,” he tells her, reaching for her pen, drawing it from limp fingers, trying again to turn her toward him, and this time she lets him. “I thought perhaps it would, that it should, but it doesn’t, Regina.” He’s looking at her now, straight in the eyes, and she wants to look away but she can’t. She’s missed his face too much, the angle of his nose, the blue of his eyes, the hair across his chin, she’s missed all of it, and now he’s so close, and she cannot stop looking. 

“Your wife-” she begins, uncertainly. What is he saying? What could he possibly be saying?

"My wife knows you only as you were, and cannot accept that you may have changed.” His lips pull into a frown as he amends, “Doesn’t care, to be honest. She’s tried to convince me you’re a horror—that you’ve killed thousands, slaughtered carelessly, tortured and tormented.”

Regina’s chest tightens painfully, because Marian is right about all of that and he should not need convincing. He should know. He knows that; how can he not have known that? 

“I did do that,” she tells him quietly. “All of it.”

Robin shakes his head, and how can he be so blind? But it’s not what she thinks it is, he is not denying her past. Instead he says, “I know. And I don’t care. She’s tried to convince me that I should care, that you’re unforgivable, that your efforts for change mean nothing in the face of all your crimes. And I cannot argue her when she lays charges against you, Regina, because you’re right. They’re all true. I have no defense, but it changes nothing for me. I cannot condemn you either, not knowing you as I do.” 

He’s blurry in front of her now, her eyes stinging with hot tears, and how can he have so much faith in her? How can he not care? _Everyone_ cares. Even those who forgive her _care_ , she knows they do. She _knows_ it. “I fell in love with the woman you are, not the one you were then, and I love you still.”

Regina hitches a breath, it shudders as it goes.

He is gripping her hands now, lifting them to his lips, pressing kisses across her fingers, opening them to dot his mouth over her palm. “Whatever blood is on these hands, I love you still.”

“You can’t,” she manages, her voice breathy and thin, those tears spilling from her eyes when she blinks.

“And yet I do,” he insists. “And Marian can’t live with it—with a man who will forgive you—and I can’t live with it, with her so unwilling to even try. And even if she’d give you a second chance, I don’t think it would make a difference. My heart is full of you, Regina, and has been since the forest. I loved her then; I love you now. It’s never been clearer to me than in these past few weeks.”

“But…” She’s at a loss, she’s sure of nothing, sure of even less than she was before. “What are you saying, Robin?”

Those warm hands of his, the ones she loves so much, the ones she dreams of, slide up her wrists, her arms, her shoulders, and cup her cheeks. “What happened doesn’t change anything,” he repeats, and then, “I love you. I’m yours if you’ll still have me.”

She’s dreaming, she must be dreaming, she thinks she’s dreaming and surely she’ll destroy him in any minute now and wake alone. But just like every night, she gives in. Just like every dream, she goes to him, slides off the chair until she’s on her knees with him and kisses him, tastes the salt water of her own tears on their lips as he kisses back. She savors every moment, every breath, every press of lips, because she is certain she’s fallen asleep at her desk and it will all be over in moments.

But this time is no dream. She does not destroy him, in the end. She kisses and kisses and kisses, and he stays, alive, and vibrant, and hers.


End file.
